Heart-rending stories of life and death: a debut fiction collection by the award-winning author of The Undertaking. A Methodist minister gone astray, a grieving trout bum gone fishing with his father’s remains, an artist overwhelmed by incarnate beauty—these are just a few of the iconic yet utterly unique characters in Thomas Lynch’s spirited collection. Set in Michigan’s north woods, in Ohio’s interior, on islands, in casinos, and in distant cities, these stories are linked by the gone and not forgotten: former spouses, dead parents, and missing children. In pursuit of love and its redemptions, these are pilgrims haunted by memory, dogged by desire, made radiant by romance and its denouements. With the elegant prose of Frederick Busch and the Irish sensibility of William Trevor, Lynch masterfully creates a world where mirage and apparition are commonplace, where people searching for connection and old comforts find them both near at hand and oddly out of reach.